Determine ammonia on api test kit

Hi I can't determine if my ammonia I's at .25 or zero. The test seems yellow but I think I see a light green tint in it. Is it .25 or zero should I be concerned, and dose with prime?
Temp 79fPH 7.6
A .25No2 0No3 0
Using fluVal cycle 5 ml daily
Prime seachem on weekly water changes

Plus I have 2 java ferns in the tank.

Update: I just did my weekly water change I used R/O water this time around and used prime. I did test again I believe it was a false positive because I did it so soon the test came out a clear .50

And I'm unclear on whether you tested the RO water directly from the RO unit, or only after adding it to your aquarium.

I always ask people to buy a gallon of distilled water and try testing some of that just as a baseline to see what their APItest kit shows using that distilled water. It's cheap, and makes for a good test to eliminate a lot of the other variables.

Keep in mind that the API ammonia test shows both ammonia and ammonium (total ammonia).

Prime.The ro is tested before adding to the tank. From the jug it's all zeros. But when you add prime and test real soon you can get a false positive I've read on here.

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II just want to know if there is a trick to tell if the light green is really light green my eyes can't tell. And if it's so light should I be concerned? I can see .50 clear but .25 to 0 is hard to tell.

I can't even see any difference between the 40 and 80 color patches on the CARD for Nitrates!

With the Ammonia, though, I have less trouble with seeing a zero reading. To me, the yellow is fairly clear and I can discern any hint of green to know that I'm not really getting zero. But above that, then it becomes a problem for me to know exactly where I am. Zero seems clear to me - anything above zero, and now I'm guessing.

I can't even see any difference between the 40 and 80 color patches on the CARD for Nitrates!

With the Ammonia, though, I have less trouble with seeing a zero reading. To me, the yellow is fairly clear and I can discern any hint of green to know that I'm not really getting zero. But above that, then it becomes a problem for me to know exactly where I am. Zero seems clear to me - anything above zero, and now I'm guessing.

I think we all have trouble with it.

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Thanks! Maybe I have not seen a clear zero yet. But like I said it's so faint. It's way better than the dark green when I began the cycle A month ago. Should I dose with prime?

Update: boom there it is. Just did a test and clear yellow! I can see now I thought I was going nuts! Thanks for your help.

I wish we could all afford to have proper testing equipment for all of this. As it is, these test kits are not bad for the price, and at least give us some idea of what's going on. But in some ways, they end up giving us even more questions!

I've been looking at these little testers from Hanna. They make them for most of the parameters we need to check, but don't have one for Nitrate that I can find. But for ammonia and nitrite, they'd be great if they work as well as they should.

It would just be nice to have something that gives me a numeric value instead of asking me to try to compare the color of a liquid in a tube against the color of a printed chart on a card.

There are some testers we use where I work that use liquid in a tube (like the API and others do), but the thing you compare them against is another bunch of liquid-filled tubes. So the comparison is very easy because you're not comparing a reflective target to a transmissive one.

But they're more money, of course.

To me, these little Hanna devices seem very promising. I like the idea of an actual colorimeter that measures the absorbance at a specific wavelength. That would take the eye strain out of the process!

I wish we could all afford to have proper testing equipment for all of this. As it is, these test kits are not bad for the price, and at least give us some idea of what's going on. But in some ways, they end up giving us even more questions!

I've been looking at these little testers from Hanna. They make them for most of the parameters we need to check, but don't have one for Nitrate that I can find. But for ammonia and nitrite, they'd be great if they work as well as they should.

It would just be nice to have something that gives me a numeric value instead of asking me to try to compare the color of a liquid in a tube against the color of a printed chart on a card.

There are some testers we use where I work that use liquid in a tube (like the API and others do), but the thing you compare them against is another bunch of liquid-filled tubes. So the comparison is very easy because you're not comparing a reflective target to a transmissive one.

But they're more money, of course.

To me, these little Hanna devices seem very promising. I like the idea of an actual colorimeter that measures the absorbance at a specific wavelength. That would take the eye strain out of the process!

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Hanna checkers are very popular in saltwater fishkeeping. You wouldn't go wrong at all having them on hand. I don't personally use them as they are pretty expensive but I do want to pick them up some time.

I can see how they'd catch on pretty quickly for aquarium use. They're not as cheap as our usual test kits, but not really all that bad for what they do.

Another approach is to buy a real spectrophotometer. Those aren't cheap unless you get a used one. And even then, you still have to buy the reagents and make the tests up yourself or you have to buy the pre-made test kits that produce the color in a tube designed to fit into the spec.

I wish we could all afford to have proper testing equipment for all of this. As it is, these test kits are not bad for the price, and at least give us some idea of what's going on. But in some ways, they end up giving us even more questions!

It would just be nice to have something that gives me a numeric value instead of asking me to try to compare the color of a liquid in a tube against the color of a printed chart on a card.

There are some testers we use where I work that use liquid in a tube (like the API and others do), but the thing you compare them against is another bunch of liquid-filled tubes. So the comparison is very easy because you're not comparing a reflective target to a transmissive one.

But they're more money, of course.

To me, these little Hanna devices seem very promising. I like the idea of an actual colorimeter that measures the absorbance at a specific wavelength. That would take the eye strain out of the process!

I bought the Exact Eco-check photometer kit but found it a couple hundred dollars cheaper on Amazon. Still very expensive but I'm thrilled to have it. It tests for ammonia, nitrite, nitrates, alkalinity, ph, phosphates, copper, chlorine, chloride and a couple of salt water tests. It doesn't test for GH but does test for Total hardness though that doesn't do me a lot of good really. It has memory for the last twenty of each test which is also helpful.
I recently switched to R/O because of high house nitrates (50-80 depending on the time of year) so have been playing with baking soda and alkalinity, trying to find the right number. Also put crushed coral in my filters.
Also am testing for nitrates every couple of days now with my planted tank and have switched to bi-weekly water changes.
I am having an issue with the ph reading being off but so far the company is being super helpful and it might be a firmware issue on my photometer so I think we'll get that figured out.

I am interested in that system. It looks like a great solution to a lot of aquarium testing.

Do they have an ammonia kit for it?

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If you buy the photometer separately then you choose which tests to buy. The Eco-check photometer can read the following tests:
Total Alkalinity, Nitrite, Nitrate, Ammonia, Total Hardness, Total Chlorine, Ph fresh, Phosphate, Copper, Chloride, Ph salt, Free Chlorine, Combined Chlorine

All the tests have Exact strips except the ph test has a reagent instead and the ammonia test uses both a reagent and a strip together.

I bought the Exact Eco-check photometer kit but found it a couple hundred dollars cheaper on Amazon. Still very expensive but I'm thrilled to have it. It tests for ammonia, nitrite, nitrates, alkalinity, ph, phosphates, copper, chlorine, chloride and a couple of salt water tests. It doesn't test for GH but does test for Total hardness though that doesn't do me a lot of good really. It has memory for the last twenty of each test which is also helpful.
I recently switched to R/O because of high house nitrates (50-80 depending on the time of year) so have been playing with baking soda and alkalinity, trying to find the right number. Also put crushed coral in my filters.
Also am testing for nitrates every couple of days now with my planted tank and have switched to bi-weekly water changes.
I am having an issue with the ph reading being off but so far the company is being super helpful and it might be a firmware issue on my photometer so I think we'll get that figured out.

Click to expand...

I should verify this, but I think you could calculate GH by subtracting the alkalinity (perhaps with a conversion factor applied) from the total hardness. So you could get your GH number that way.

Yes, thats the one. Can you get your work to pay for it??
I like it a lot. I like that it does so many different tests like the phosphates, copper, chloride in addition to the "normal" tests. Its not faster as far as time wise for ammonia, nitrite, nitrates etc. But I like that you do the test and can walk away while it counts up and comes up with a final reading. I think the nitrate test is the longest at 10minutes. The others are 5 minutes I believe and a couple are 2 or 3 minutes. I also like that it stores 20 past readings per test.
We were never able to fix the ph issue so they are going to send me a new one next week and I'll return the one I've got.

If you've got more information on how to figure out the GH based on total alkalinity and hardness that would be awesome! I am using the drop test right now.